Imagine the huge improvement in air quality if we shifted to pedal power. In Groningen, in the Netherlands, almost two-thirds of trips are made by bike, making it one of the most cycle-friendly cities in the world. It’s no accident that the Dutch city also has great air quality. The UK manages a meagre 2% cycling rate overall. And we all know about the air quality here.

If, by the way, your wheels are redundant, please pass them on to the Bike Project to match with someone who desperately wants one.

But actually you don’t need your own bike to clear the air. Public bike-share schemes – now fixtures across the world – are key to moving away from cars.

But they’ve got to be good. The danger is that if there are no bikes in docking stations when you turn up and your commute is thwarted, you’ll revert to being a car driver – and an embittered one.

Fears like this explain why three huge China- based firms ready to flood UK cities with bikes have been given a lukewarm reception. When China’s Ofo, the “Uber for bikes”, wheeled into Cambridge recently, it sparked fears that, in the absence of a carefully regulated docking station system, mountains of bikes would be abandoned in chaos.

It’s early days, but we need more than bikes. Sorry to harp on about the Netherlands again, but with 22,000 miles of cycle paths, that’s what you call a cycling culture. It wasn’t always thus. In the late 1960s, Dutch towns were as car-centric as everyone else. The 1973 oil crisis, combined with fears about the danger to children from traffic, convinced a few planners to stand up to the car. Soon after, citizens woke up to find new one-way systems that meant there was no point trying to cross town in a car. That’s what you call tough love.

The big picture: the future is green

Is this the UK’s greenest building? Newly opened at Nottingham University, this science complex contains state of the art labs and reaches two prestigious sustainability standards, BREEAM Outstanding and LEED Platinum. There’s a carbon-neutral lab powered by solar energy and biofuel, and any excess heat is used by the rest of the campus. We hope emerging scientists are inspired by their surroundings.